10/2/2018

This letter does not put Our Heroine Dr. Ford in a very good light. If you believe this ex-boyfriend, she coached a friend about polygraphs (despite denying at the hearing having ever so advised anyone), flew with no problem and never expressed a fear of tight spaces or few exits, having lived in a small apartment with one door (despite how she couldn’t fly to D.C. because of PTSD and despite her testimony about how she hates having just one exit in a residence), and she charged a bunch of stuff on a card he had taken her off of, and initially lied about it.

Meanwhile, this letter from Chuck Grassley to her lawyers suggests that they are hiding her therapists’ notes, audio or video of her polygraph, and the entirety of her electronic communications with reporters:

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford said this regarding her need for a second front door:

I told my husband before we were married that I had experienced a sexual assault. I had never told the details to anyone until May 2012, during a couples counseling session. The reason this came up in counseling is that my husband and I had completed an extensive remodel of our home, and I insisted on a second front door, an idea that he and others disagreed with and could not understand. In explaining why I wanted to have a second front door, I described the assault in detail.

During questioning, Sen. Feinstein asked Dr. Ford if the reason she wanted the second door was because she had claustrophobia as a result of her alleged assault. Dr. Ford confirmed it was.

However, a report out today raises questions about the veracity of Dr. Ford’s statement. From the investigation:

Ford never specified when the renovation took place, leaving a possible impression that it and the therapy session happened around the same time.

But documents reveal the door was installed years before as part of an addition, and has been used by renters and even a marriage counseling business.

“The door was not an escape route but an entrance route,” said an attorney familiar with the ongoing congressional investigation. “It appears the real plan for the second front door was to rent out a separate room.”

Public records confirm the assertion:

Palo Alto city records show that a building permit for an additional room and exterior door was issued to Ford and her husband on Feb. 4, 2008 — more than four years before the May 2012 therapy session where, she says, she first identified Kavanaugh as her attacker.

All the remodeling, including a new bathroom, was completed by February 2010. The only additional permits issued to Ford at her Palo Alto address are for “solar panels” on the roof, a “solar hot water system” in the garage, and an “electric vehicle charge station” for the driveway — all of which were issued after 2012.

Other documents, including health care-provider registration records, reveal that a marriage counselor listed Ford’s home address as her place of employment, ostensibly using the extra room and door for her clinical practice. That marriage therapist, Sylvia Adkins Randall, sold the home to the Fords in 2007, but continued to maintain the address for her business.

Contacted by phone, Dr. Randall expressed concern about her real estate transaction and prior relationship with Ford being reported.

“I don’t want it to be mentioned,” she said. “It’s personal.”

Randall is a licensed therapist who specializes in treating “disturbing memories from the past.” She supports Ford and described her allegation against Kavanaugh as “credible.”

Since the second front door was installed, moreover, students from local colleges have lived in the additional room with the private door. In fact, under congressional questioning Thursday, Ford testified she has “hosted” various other residents there, including “Google interns.”

The attorney said the tenants call into question Ford’s claims about why she installed the additional exterior door in her home.

“Renters and a business operating out of Dr. Ford’s home would explain the added door,” he said. “Clearly, there were business purposes [for it], not just ones related to her anxieties.”

The investigative report also notes that Dr. Ford and her husband own a second home by the beach. It does not have a second escape door:

Property records show Ford and her husband, Russell Ford, bought the beach house in 2007. This July – the same month Ford sent a letter to Feinstein accusing Kavanaugh of attacking her — Ford applied for permits to build a front porch and new decks at the home, located on Seaside Street in Santa Cruz. There is no application for a second front door, however, and the recent permits are the only ones applied for since 2007.

No evidence has emerged of any other exterior door construction at either of Ford’s homes, authorized or not.

A reasonable question asked:

“If she rents out the room to Google employees, how does she get access to the second door to escape a perceived attacker?” noted the attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Renting out the room is completely contrary to her stated reason of why she wanted the second front door.”

And then there is the questionable timing of her claims regarding the second door at her home:

But the far more recent story of the “second front door” also seemed to recede in Ford’s memory banks, only to pop up after speculation about her political motives grew.

She did not mention it in her original letter to Feinstein in July, or the statement she made for a polygraph exam in August, or a personal letter to Grassley last month. The tale of the door emerged, suddenly, on the eve of her testimony before Congress.

Note: While Dr. Randall says that she is not the therapist who treated Dr. Ford in 2012, she had this to offer:

Dr. Randall said she does not believe that the door was just a pretext to hide a political motive.

“Part of her trauma was feeling trapped, and that stayed with her,” she asserted.

Randall, who specializes in sexuality, depression, anxiety and fears and phobias, says that Ford’s failure to tell anyone for some 30 years about the high school incident stemmed not from “repressed memory syndrome” but from the simple fact she was “15 years old at the time and couldn’t tell anyone about it.”

“She didn’t want her parents to know she was drinking at a house without parents there,” Randall said. “There was a lot of shame involved.”

Anyway, all of this just leads to more questions. Questions that demand answers. But in order to get the necessary answers, the questions have to first be asked.

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